After some scheduled maintenance (Windows Updates, software updates/installation etc) on an older HP DL370 G6 server running Windows Server 2012, a colleague noticed an issue with the networking configuration. Post maintenance, I was told that the server was not accessible on the network, and with it being weekend maintenance my colleague simply added it's IP address back to one of the 4 physical network card ports so that the server was at least accessible again. It later transpired that for some reason, the networking configuration on the server had broken in a way that NIC Teaming was no longer working. This server was also a standalone Hyper-V host, the Hyper-V virtual networking was also broken.

Dyn or Dynect are an Internet based company, offering products to monitor, control, and optimise online infrastructure, and also domain registration services and email products. The company that I am currently working for, recently had a requirement to automate the creation of DNS A records in their Dyn Managed DNS account as part of some automation work.

I recently embarked on a project to build an Ubuntu PXE OS deployment server that would allow for unattended installation of both physical/virtual servers. This piece of work is part of a wider 'automation' project, for which we are using Chef as our configuration management tool. As part of the unattended installation of new servers, I wanted to automate the installation and configuration of the Chef client agent.

When adding a new network interface to a Cisco ASA, you must specify it's security level. Based on this security level, the default Cisco ASA ACL allows you to access "less secure" networks (with a lower security level), and denies access to "more secure" networks (with a higher security level). The default rule works well, until you need to allow this security zone access to a "more secure" security zone. For example, a DMZ could have a security level of say 25, allowing access to an outside interface with a security level of 0, but it would be implicitly denied access to an inside interface with a security level of 100. When we need to add an ACL to permit certain access to the inside interface, the implicit "Permit all traffic to less secure networks" rule is automatically removed by the Cisco ASA. We can manually add a form of this ACL back in to retain security between zones.

It is completely stress-free and a joy to use. I was sceptical at first, but after trying it free for 30 days I could immediately see how it could turn a day working on my accounts into just a few hours, if not minutes. You can upload bank statements (or even have them import automatically if your bank supports feeds through DataServices), 'explain' transactions and it learns and categorizes each one, so that next time you upload a statement it will already know what most things are!

After recently purchasing a MacBook Air, one of the first things I wanted to do was install Firefox and copy my user profile with all my addons and history onto my new machine. Being a first time OS X user meant that this proved a little trickier than anticipated.

Although this post is meant as more of a personal reminder for myself on how to enable and disable hidden files and folders in OS X, I'll include some brief notes for anyone that may need to use Firefox profile manager to manage their profile.

Soon after playing with a friend's iPhone I was hooked. Then, to obtain my own handset, I was forced to change onto the o2 network because of the exclusivity deal they initially had with Apple to resell the handset in the UK. Since owning an iPhone, I honestly don't think I would ever consider purchasing a non Apple handset in the future! But, like all devices, even the iPhone has it's flaws. I had an issue recently when I tried to change the length of time my iPhone rings before voicemail activates.

Since I recently changed employers, a new responsibility that I have undertaken is the upkeep/maintenance of a single BlackBerry Enterprise Server installation and the handsets used in conjunction with it. I had never owned a BlackBerry handset but I had looked at both BlackBerry server and handset technology in my previous role as a consideration for mobile workers. Last week, I was given a BlackBerry Curve 8310 handset by a user that reported they were unable to open any attachments - although in this case more specifically a PDF.

With its recent release, I decided to apply Service Pack 1 to my Exchange 2010 installation. I had read about many of the new features it offered and I was more curious about the Outlook Web App (OWA) improvements than anything else. I set about extracting and running running the SP1 installer, installing any prerequisites that the installer prompted me for before the upgrade. The upgrade lasted around 45 minutes and I was surprised to see that I was not prompted to restart the server post installation (even though I did out of habit!) Shortly afterwards I ran a few checks to make sure everything was OK and I began to notice a few peculiar issues.

I have a sound understanding of Exchange server 2003 but skipped a whole generation by never really testing/playing with Exchange 2007. However, I recently undertook a server migration where I deployed Exchange 2010 and decommissioned an old Exchange 2003 server. I replaced the server like-for-like and so the Exchange 2010 server was also a single server operating in the domain.

Before hand, I decided to try a deployment on a test server just to see if I had any issues. The server is a single box that is also a Domain Controller. For testing purposes I also installed Exchange 2010 onto the same server. Initial installation and configuration was a breeze and I was soon sending and receiving email internally and externally. Upon investigation of some of the more granular Exchange configuration I soon had an issue when I tried to enable Recipient Filtering, there was simply no option to do so.